X5 and Windows 8??

[Doug Park]

I just spent part of the last 2 days upgrading my beta version of Windows 8 to the release version and am probably going to try to make it my primary development system.

My impressions so far are mixed.

Most of the UI is mainly just a step sideways, but there are a few very nice improvements, like the task manager has not only prettier graphics, but more useful information.

The big annoyances for me at first have been getting to the control panel, application list, and shutting down/restarting the computer.

It is clear that the UI is centered around supporting tablets, which MS really had to do to remain competitive, but at the same time it seems like they kind of ignored the desktop market with the design.

So far I'm not unhappy with it as it seems like everything is still there and works. There is definitely a bigger initial learning curve than with older OS upgrades, or at least it seems that way to me.

Chief is working pretty well on Windows 8. We have one known issue where the wait cursor shows up if you let it sit idle for awhile. This is more an annoyance than a problem with chief. As soon as you move the mouse it goes away.

We will probably have a fix for that in the next update.

Other than that I'm not aware of issues with Chief. Our testing department has been looking at it for awhile.

I'm hearing a lot of the same comments about not upgrading to Windows 8, and honestly I wasn't all that motivated to do so either. If I didn't have a need to do so I probably would have put it off for awhile longer.

I don't see Windows 8 as being significantly incompatible with software, like Vista was, so I'm inclined to think that adoption of this OS will perhaps be better than the naysayers are thinking, but probably not as fast as Windows 7.

Because of the change in UI I suspect that Windows 8 will tend to make migration to a Mac more attractive.

We will not be supporting the ARM Windows 8 processors at this time so most of the tablet options won't run Chief. We will likely move in that direction in the future, but that depends on availability of libraries that we use and demand. Currently the demand is pretty much non-existant and we have some significant libraries that are missing.

In short Windows 8 is appears to be a solid option for Chief so if you want to move in that direction I don't anticipate any significant issues.